Quiet book: Do you wanna build a snowman?

Koala loves her Hello Kitty dress up page so much that I wanted to make her another page that was similar. 

Since it was cold and Koala loves snowmen, I looked up some snowman quiet book pages. There were a couple pages I modeled this 'build a snowman' page from but this was the only link that still worked. 

I wanted to add Olaf from Frozen to the page so it could be a 'Do you wanna build a snowman?' page. 

I found a picture of Olaf to trace and made this felt version that I sewed down. I put a little stuffing in between the background and Olaf's belly to make him look a little plump. 

I originally thought of making the pieces for Olaf for Koala to build but decided against that since it wouldn't give much of a variety. 

Instead, I put Olaf on the left side of the page and left space to build the snowman. 

For the background, I used blue stuff felt that I had bought and white regular felt for the back hill. 

I made the front hill into pockets to hold the snowman pieces and put pellon to reinforce the white felt so that it would be sturdier. I sewed it to the page leaving the top open and putting two vertical lines to create 3 pockets. Then I started stitching the words on the hill. In retrospect, I should have sewn the words on the front pocket BEFORE sewing it to the page lol! And I probably should have used a template or written it on first. It came out kinda crooked. 

I added three snaps for the snowman. This time I opted to use snaps instead of Velcro because it looked nicer and also because I've seen how Velcro can wear out the background felt. The snaps are still hard for Koala to put on by herself but it works. 

I contemplated making different noses, eyes etc for the face but decided against it because the pieces would be too small. Instead, I glued two googly eyes, made a carrot nose from felt and stitched a smile onto a small circle

I made two different bodies. 

One short body on the left and two circles on the right.

For the accessories, there are:

1 set of arms with blue mittens

2 scarves- a red scarf and a blue bandana

3 hats- top hat, beanie and a cowboy hat

The finished product:

So, do YOU wanna build a snowman?

Quiet book: fishing page

It's time for a quiet book blog post!

This is a quiet book fishing page.

I modeled this page after a couple different fishing versions that I found. 

I really liked how this fishing page looked because it was so cute. 

But I also liked the idea of a Bible based book ie becoming fishers of men or Jesus and the miraculous catch of fish (John 21:6). 

There was this page with a net that I liked.

I took the ocean page from the first blog and added a boat at the top.

 I took the idea of the net from the second blog to store the fish when not in use. 

The net is actually a bag that some marbles came in. I put in a vinyl bag (also a recycled package from something) inside the net so that the fish didn't get stuck when trying to put them in. Then I sewed the netting to the vinyl bag just to keep then together and I weaved ribbon through the top of the netting so that it would close like a drawstring.

I thought that the fish on the first blog were cute so I made templates of those and cut them out of felt. I reinforced them with Pellon and stuck a paper clip in between before I sewed them together. I super glued the eyes on (which didn't stop some of the eyes from falling off. Oh well) 

I didn't get a picture of the fish before I let Koala play with them so two of octopus' legs are shorter in the picture.

I ran out of time before we went on our trip so here is Koala using a makeshift fishing pole which worked well for a while. But Koala used this page so often that eventually the fishing pole fell apart so she couldn't use it anymore. That's when I finally decided to make the real fishing pole. 

I took a wooden disposable chopstick that had a thick end and drilled a hole in it. Then I threaded some ribbon through the hole and tied it to the stick so that it wouldn't fall through. On the end of the ribbon, I attached a round magnet using a glue gun. Then I decorated it to look like a round fishing tackle/bobbin.

This is the finished fishing pole and up close pic of the tackle (which kind of looks like a pokeball).

Koala seems to enjoy this page a lot because no matter how many time she plays with it, it's still fun. She loves catching the fish over and over and it keeps her busy for a while. This page is definitely one of my favorite not only because I like how it turned out but because Koala loves playing with it.  

Quiet book: Itsy Bitsy Spider

I came across this cute quiet book page for the itsy bitsy spider.

I liked how this blog had the spider go up and down on a string. I searched on Pinterest for other ideas and came across this blog. I liked this version even better. It was cuter and I liked how it had the flip to go from sunny to raining. 

For my version, I did a little bit from both blogs. I pretty much modeled it after the second flip blog. I made the template for the water spout from that page (tracing it from my computer) but I decided not to do the flip for the spout. 

I spent a little extra time on the house- I decided it needed to be a brick house lol. I'm not sure why I decided to make it so complicated but it turned out nicely. 

Work in progress 

For the spider, I just cut out a black oval from stiff felt and then free styled some legs and sewed the legs to the body. 

I stitched in a smile using red thread and on the back of the spider, I sewed on a black strip so I could slip ribbon through. 

I had googly eyes so I used those instead of sewing eyes because I think they look cuter than beady sewn eyes.

Work in progress: spider with some of the bricks for the brick wall 

I threaded a ribbon through the back of the spider and then attached the ribbon to the top and bottom of the water spout. 

For the background, I used simple green felt for the ground which I fringed the top to make it look like grass. I cut two squares- one light blue and one dark blue and I sewed one edge of each color together. I then sewed the opposite edge of the dark blue to the top of the page and the other edge of the light blue below the grass. Then I sewed the middle of each color to the Pellon beneath it so that the square folded and created the flip.

I added grey clouds to the dark blue side. I just free style cut the clouds and added a red stitched smile and googly eyes before sewing it to the page. I liked how the one blog had the ribbon as the rain and originally I was going to make it like they did with felt raindrops. But when I cut out the raindrops I decided it wouldn't look good once it was stitched to the ribbon because it was too small. Instead, I decided to use the light blue heart beads that I had leftover from the abacus page I made.

In retrospect, I should have sewed the ribbon under the clouds BEFORE I sewed the clouds to the page. But I didn't so it was a bit more challenging to add. I had to tuck the ribbon in between one of the stitches and the try to sew the ribbon down by going over the stitching in the clouds. It was much more complicated than it needed to be. The lesson here is plan out your page BEFORE you start sewing to avoid making extra work for yourself. 

For the light blue side, I added a sun, which was just a yellow circle with a red stitched smile and googly eyes. I was going to add sun beams but it looked dumb. The page seemed pretty bare so I added a white cloud and a flower to it. I wanted to add a bee to the page as well because the sunny page still looked bare even with the flower but if I added the bee, the rainy page just like chaotic since it had the raindrops as well. 

Since the flower had to be on both the rainy and sunny page, I basically cut out two of each shape/color and then sewed them to each page. I tried to make them look as identical as I could. I added googly eyes to each flower and one stem for both pages.

This is another page that Koala likes but she mostly plays with when I play with her because she likes when I sing the itsy bitsy spider song. Although these days, I sometimes catch her playing with it and going through motions of having the spider climb up, then the rain falls and the spider falls down. But she still enjoys it best when I sing it to her. 

Quiet book: Lost sheep

When looking up pages for Koala's quiet book, I discovered that a lot of people use the quiet books to entertain their children during church so there were quite a few Bible pages. One Bible quiet book page was to find the lost sheep. 

I took this idea and decided to make a background like this forest page. 

I liked how the page had different layers and got the idea that each layer could be a hiding spot for the sheep.

 I started off with the bottom layer and made a mountain. I sewed the bottom and side but left an open pocket where the sheep could hide. I reinforced the mountain with Pellon to make it more sturdy. I added the tree and once again left open a pocket where the leaves were. Then I added the bush and pine tree. Next was the grassy hill and last was the rock that rolls away using a brad. Each piece was reinforced with Pellon and then sewed to the page leaving a pocket for where the sheep can fit in. Most of my other pages I hand sewed but it was easier to use my sewing machine for this page.

This bottom picture shows the rock rolled away. 

For the sheep, I saw this cute sheep on Pinterest. 

Even though a template was given, I ended up making my own by tracing a picture of the sheep from my computer screen. I hand sewed the sheep and stuffed a little bit of cotton in it to give it a little depth. 

Here's a picture of the six possible hiding places for the sheep. 

I really liked how this page turned out. Koala doesn't really play with it by herself because it's more of a page to play with someone. But when we were on the plane for our trip, we played with it for a while. I would hide the sheep and she would find it. 

She still will briefly play with it now when she's flipping through the book. She'll say 'where's the sheep?' and then find it from where I put it from the last time she used it. Then once she finds it, she moves onto the next page. 

Quiet book: Corduroy

One of Koala's favorite books to read is Corduroy- a classic that I remember from when I was little. I thought that making a button page based on this book would be perfect. 

The idea behind the page was to have buttons for Corduroy's straps so that Koala would learn how to button things. Unfortunately, in terms of functionality, I feel like this page is a bit of a fail. The page looks exactly how I wanted it to- like the cover of the book.

 I actually traced the cover off my computer screen so that the letters, etc were exactly like the book. 

Even though Corduroy only has one button in the book, I put buttons on both straps to give the page more than just one thing for Koala to do. 

The straps lift up and can be buttoned and unbuttoned. 

But the button holes on the straps are too small for Koala to button. Maybe she'll use the page when she gets older but for now, it's just a pretty page that doesn't get much use. #fail

Quiet book: The Wheels on the Bus/Pigeon

For this page, I combined the Wheels on the bus page with the Pigeon from Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

I got my inspiration for the bus page from these two blogs: this and this.

I actually used the bus from the second blog as my template (traced from my computer screen like most of my templates). 

I sewed the bus onto background felt and left open the bottom of the window so that the pigeon could ride in there. That bottom part of the window is reinforced with Pellon to make it more sturdy when putting the pigeon in. 

Page in progress: Koala had fun with it even before it was finished- she stuck her toy frog in the bus.

For the pigeon, I traced the template from the actual book. The big pigeon books are about the size of the quiet book pages so the pigeon was just the right size for the template. I made the front design and sewed all the pieces onto Pellon. Then since pigeon was going to be taken in and out, I figured I should cover the back of the Pellon so I added felt to the backside as well. Since it has 2 layers of felt and the Pellon, it's pretty sturdy, 

I added wheels that I cut out of black stiff felt. (You can find some large sheets of stiff felt in limited colors like black, dark blue, and sometimes red but they're about a dollar a sheet and make just one page if you use it for the background. Since it costs a lot more than using the white Pellon, I usually use the stiff felt for small things. ) 

I found big orange brads that I put as the hub caps so that the wheels turn. (The wheels of the bus go round and round... Something you can sing while playing with the page together).

Here's the finished product. (I forgot to take a picture of it when I first made it so doesn't look as nice since Koala used it a lot). 

Pigeon riding the bus- he still doesn't get to drive!

Koala playing with the page- putting pigeon in the bus. 

Quiet book: piggy bank & purse

Piggy bank:

This page has a pretty simple concept of putting money in the piggy bank. 

I found a piggy bank  quiet book page that I liked on Pinterest. 

On one side she had a cute pig that you could put coins into. Then on the other side of the page, there's a pencil case bag that catches the coins. 

I decided to combine the piggy bank page with a purse page like this one 

I thought instead of having a pencil case on the backside of the piggy bank page, why not have a purse there. Then the money can go in the piggy bank and then it goes in the purse and can be spent lol! (lol I know, I know that's the opposite concept of saving!)

For the piggy bank page, I traced the pig from the one page because I thought the pig was cute. 

I cut a slit at the top and reinforced it with Pellon. I also made sure to sew it to the inside of the purse page on the back so that when the coins go in, they fall into the purse on the other side. 

I was going to use juice tops like the other website. I bought the frozen juice just so that we could have the juice tops for the coins but Hubby recycled them before I could grab them. So I ended up getting play coins instead. 

I couldn't get a good picture but you can see the inside of the purse (the brown and red) when you open up the piggy bank. 

For the purse, I didn't want to just make a generic looking purse. I modeled my purse after the LV neverfull- only the best for my Koala! 😉

I initially thought about making this page into a weave page. 

But to make the neverfull look realistic, the strips of felt would be too thin and probably wouldn't survive as a weave page.

I used dark brown and tan felt which I cut into thin strips. In retrospect, I wish I used a regular brown rather than the tan because I think that would've matched the color of the real purse better. But I didn't want to redo it. 

I then took the strips and weaved them together to make the checkerboard look. Then I sewed the pieces to a piece of Pellon.

When that was done, I set that aside and worked on the inside on the purse. On the inside of the purse I made the slit from the piggy bank look like the zippered pocket of the inside of the purse. And of course, since the Neverfull is lined red, I put red felt on the inside and sewed that all down. 

This is what it looks like from the top looking in.  (I didn't snap a picture of what it looked like before putting it all together.)

 I then sewed that checkered pellon piece to the back page of the piggy bank. 

Somehow the purse ended up slanted on the page which kind of bothers the OCD side of me but it was too hard to redo so I left it. 

I added accents to make the purse look realistic- leather trim and metal rings. 

The page looks pretty bare to me and I keep thinking I need to add something to the background but not too sure what to add so for now, the page is done.

Quiet book page: Hello Kitty

Time for another quiet book post.

Another popular page is doll dress up- similar to paper doll dress up only with felt - like from this blog

Once again I wanted to make pages with things that Koala was familiar with so one day when Koala was coloring in her Hello Kitty coloring book, I came up with the idea of a Hello Kitty dress up page. This was easier than making a doll template since I wasn't sure how cute I could make the doll. Plus making the clothes for Hello Kitty was easy. 

I traced the template of Hello Kitty from the coloring book since there was one page that had the perfect size for the book. 

I added a strip of Velcro just so the felt wouldn't get as worn out from the sticky part of the Velcro. 

For the clothes, one quiet book had an armoir to hold the clothes which I thought was a cute idea. 

I traced the armoir from this page and just made it wider to fit my 11x11 page. 

The outfits are 'hanging' on the inside. I put strips of velcro on the inside of the armoir and the back of the outfits. Each outfit is reinforced with Pellon and sewn together. I had matching bows for the outfits but some have gotten lost. 

Some of the pins & outfits: pic taken when I was in the process of making them

Koala is so funny because when Hello Kitty is in between outfits and isn't wearing anything, Koala says, 'Hello Kitty cold!' and then she shivers and puts an outfit on Hello Kitty. lol

This page was one of the pages that kept Koala busiest on the plane and it's probably the most worn out page because she uses it the most. She seems to enjoy changing Hello Kitty's outfits and accessories. Success!

Quiet book: Simple 8x8 pages

I wanted to use up the Pellon that I had cut up into 8x8 squares so I decided to make a smaller book. For the 8x8 quiet book pages, I had to use simple designs/pages since I didn't have much room.

Music:

I saw this music page and thought it would be fairly easy to make. 

I wanted to make my page look more like real sheet music so i started off with just black ribbon and a felt note with a bell in it. But it looked too plain so I added a treble clef. 

I attached the note to the page with black ribbon after the first one disappeared. The page is not that exciting but was easy to make. I'm hoping that later when Koala is older and is maybe taking music classes, we can use it to practice reading music or something.

Abacus: 

Another simple page was an abacus counting page. For this page, I poked 10 holes on each side of the page. I threaded black ribbon through the holes and on the back side I tied a knot. I put beads on each of the strings- first one, then two, etc. Then I threaded the ribbon through the other side and also tied a knot on the other side. 

I added a vertical strip of felt on each side to make the ribbon more secure and to give the page a cleaner look. This is another page I think we'll use more when Koala is older and learning to count. 

Shapes:

I made a simple matching up shapes page. This isn't the most interesting page but was easy to make. 

I modeled it after this quiet book page. I cut out two of each shape/color. The first set, I sewed to the 8x8 sheet of Pellon and then added a Velcro circle. 

Initially, I just attached the second set of shapes to Pellon and put velcro on the back. 

But as I discovered, loose pieces get lost easily so I eventually attached each piece to ribbon. 

I was impressed how Koala immediately matched the pieces to the correct spot the first time she played with it. It's not a page that keeps her attention for long right now since she's mastered matching the pieces. I'm now starting to use the page to teach her the names of the shapes.

Stop, slow, go:

On the backside of the shapes page, I have a stoplight page modeled after these pages: 

Stoplight 1

Stoplight 2

It's a fairly simple page with circles attached by ribbon.  This was one of the more recent pages I made and I used snaps instead of velcro because I found that velcro really wears out the felt. The downside to snaps is that they're so small that Koala has a hard time snapping them on. But I think in a little while she'll be able to do it with no problem.

When Koala matches the colors, I try to teach her that Red means stop, yellow means slow, and green means go. Since it's so new, we've only done it a couple times so we'll see if she catches on.

Dog collar: 

Some pages like to teach coordination or skills like zipping a zipper or fastening a buckle. I was going to make a page with just buckles and zippers but thought that was not very creative and I'd rather have a page that's cute but uses the zipper or buckle. So I searched and saw a popular page was a dog collar or even a belt. I decided to do a dog collar page. 

I thought the dog in this blog was cute but wanted to do a more recognizable dog. Snoopy was the simplest dog I could think of. 

Not much to it, but it teaches the skill of opening and closing a buckle. I thought Koala would have more fun with this page because she used to love to play with the buckle on her high chair. But I guess the novelty wore off.

For now, the 8x8 book is complete with 6 pages including the Elmo puzzle page. I still have some 8x8 Pellon so I may add pages in the future but for now my focus is on the bigger more detailed pages.

In order to keep the pages together, I poked holes in all the pages and put in grommets. I then used 2 loose binder rings to hold the pages together. I eventually need to make a cover but that'll be another time/another blog post.